Flashing Dell XR4000 Witness Node (with something other than ESXI)

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Flashing the Dell XR4000 Witness Node (Nano Processing Unit) with Harvester

Once you have serial access to the device, reboot the host and boot to either USB or PXE and install Harvester per usual.

What is the Nano Processing Unit

Because the small Atom-based witness node operates in a headless capacity, we need to serial into the node. Here's how you do it.

https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/en-us/p/dell-poweredge-xr4000-nano-processing-unit/

Prereqs

• Micro-USB cable
• USB/PXE boot

Connecting to the Witness Node

Step 1: Since the Dell XR4000 does not contain a backplane-based serial interface, we have to physically connect the witness/NPU node to a host. There is a small micro-usb port on the NPU, plug in a micro-usb cable and attach the other end to another node or laptop running linux (with docker).

Step 2:

docker run -it --device=/dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0 opensuse/leap /bin/bash
zypper in minicom screen
screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

This is what you will likely see with a fresh XR4000 install. It's ESXI, and it wont be around much longer.

3. From there, flash the node via USB or PXE.

Flashing Harvester (Witness)

See: https://docs.harvesterhci.io/v1.3/advanced/witness/